Publications

Volcanic activity has caused significant hazards to numerous airports worldwide, with local to far-ranging effects on travelers and commerce. Analysis of a new compilation of incidents of airports impacted by volcanic activity from 1944 through 2006 reveals that, at a minimum, 101 airports in 28 countries were affected on 171 occasions by eruptions at 46 volcanoes. Since 1980, five...

During mid-June 2007, the summit of Kīlauea Volcano, Hawai‘i, deflated rapidly as magma drained from the subsurface to feed an east rift zone intrusion and eruption. Coincident with the deflation, summit SO2 emission rates rose by a factor of four before decaying to background levels over several weeks. We propose that SO2 release was triggered by static decompression caused by magma...

Digital cameras, sensitive to specific regions of the ultra-violet (UV) spectrum, have been employed for quantifying sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions in recent years. The instruments make use of the selective absorption of UV light by SO2 molecules to determine pathlength concentration. Many monitoring advantages are gained by using this technique, but the accuracy and limitations have not...

The Long Valley caldera (California) formed ~760,000 yr ago following the massive eruption of the Bishop Tuff. Postcaldera volcanism in the Long Valley volcanic field includes lava domes as young as 650 yr. The recent geological unrest is characterized by uplift of the resurgent dome in the central section of the caldera (75 cm in the past 33 yr) and earthquake activity followed by...

Age spectra from 40Ar/39Ar incremental heating experiments yield ages of 298 ± 25ka and 310 ± 31ka for transitional composition lavas from two cones on submarine Mahukona Volcano, Hawaii. These ages are younger than the inferred end of the tholeiitic shield stage and indicate that the volcano had entered the postshield alkalic stage before going extinct. Previously reported elevated...

We have inverted polarity and amplitude information of representative microearthquakes to investigate source mechanisms of seismicity induced by hydraulic fracturing in the Carthage Cotton Valley, east Texas, gas field. With vertical arrays of four and eight three-component geophones in two monitoring wells, respectively, we were able to reliably determine source mechanisms of the...

Newberry Volcano in central Oregon is dry over much of its vast area, except for the lakes in the caldera and the single creek that drains them. Despite the lack of obvious glacial striations and well-formed glacial moraines, evidence indicates that Newberry was glaciated. Meter-sized foreign blocks, commonly with smoothed shapes, are found on cinder cones as far as 7 km from the caldera...

The flow structure in the developing region of a turbulent jet has been examined using particle image velocimetry methods, considering the flow at steady state conditions. The velocity fields were integrated to determine the ratio of the entrained air speed to the jet speed, which was approximately 0.03 for a range of Mach numbers up to 0.89 and Reynolds numbers up to 217,000. This range...

In the late morning of 12 July 2008, the Alaska Volcano Observatory (AVO) received an unexpected call from the U.S. Coast Guard, reporting an explosive volcanic eruption in the central Aleutians in the vicinity of Okmok volcano, a relatively young (~2000-year-old) caldera. The Coast Guard had received an emergency call requesting assistance from a family living at a cattle ranch on the...

The history of dome growth and geodetic deflation during the 2004–2008 Mount St. Helens eruption can be fit to theoretical curves with parameters such as reservoir volume, bubble content, initial overpressure, and magma rheology, here assumed to be Newtonian viscous, with or without a solid plug in the conduit center. Data from 2004–2008 are consistent with eruption from a 10–25 km3...

Clustered earthquakes located 25 km northeast of Augustine Volcano began about 6 months before and ceased soon after the volcano's 2006 explosive eruption. This distal seismicity formed a dense cluster less than 5 km across, in map view, and located in depth between 11 km and 16 km. This seismicity was contemporaneous with sharply increased shallow earthquake activity directly below the...

Fire is an important control on the carbon (C) balance of the boreal forest region. Here, we present findings from two complementary studies that examine how fire modifies soil organic matter properties, and how these modifications influence rates of decomposition and C exchange in black spruce (Picea mariana) ecosystems of interior Alaska. First, we used laboratory incubations to...